H. L. Mencken
H. L. Mencken
Henry Louis Menckenwas a German-American journalist, satirist, cultural critic and scholar of American English. Known as the "Sage of Baltimore", he is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the first half of the twentieth century. As a scholar Mencken is known for The American Language, a multi-volume study of how the English language is spoken in the United States. His satirical reporting on the Scopes trial, which he dubbed the "Monkey Trial", also...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth12 September 1880
CountryUnited States of America
Time is a great legalizer, even in the field of morals
One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent.
Congress consists of one-third, more or less, scoundrels; two-thirds, more or less, idiots; and three-thirds, more or less, poltroons.
To sum up: 1. The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute. 2. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. 3. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride.
Those who can -- do. Those who can't -- teach.
There are two kinds of Europeans: The smart ones, and those who stayed behind.
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
Here is something that the psychologists have so far neglected: the love of ugliness for its own sake, the lust to make the world intolerable. Its habitat is the United States. Out of the melting pot emerges a race which hates beauty as it hates truth.
The best client is a scared millionaire.
Perhaps the most revolting character that the United States ever produced was the Christian Businessman.
One horse-laugh is worth ten-thousand syllogisms.
There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.
Husbands never become good; they merely become proficient.
Archbishop - A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.